


tomorrow?

by alpacasandravens



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: M/M, No Man's Land, there is a bit of murder, they're cute goddammit, very bruce-character-study for a bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 18:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20840243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: It's No Man's Land, and Bruce finds out that maybe he and the Scarecrow aren't so different after all. (a scarebat story somehow featuring neither dark!bruce nor a redeemed!jonathan)





	tomorrow?

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of Gotham season 5 coming on American Netflix today, I decided to re-watch it and then sat down and wrote this instead. Maybe I'll get around to watching it tomorrow. This is my first story for this pairing, and if you're waiting on any of my boatload of hattercrow wips, don't worry! i'm getting there! In the meantime, enjoy!

Bruce grew up with Gotham falling down around him. At first it was subtle, but he noticed. It was hard not to, when he spent every waking moment so attuned to the city that had taken his parents from him. But no matter how hard he looked, Bruce couldn’t see everything. There was simply too much to see - Gotham had always been crazy; his parents’ deaths had just set the city loose. 

Soon, Bruce learned to assume he’d never seen the worst of it. That night in the alley might have been the worst night of his life, but the city never failed to try and change that. It threw betrayals and ritual sacrifices and other things that weren’t terrible so much as weird, clones and conspiracies and it was all too much. But all that meant was that he had to push through it.

It wasn’t a particularly special night when a minor gang burst into the Iceberg Lounge and made their stand against Penguin. Bruce had been expecting it - even if Jim Gordon wasn’t going to do anything about the crime licenses, that didn’t mean no one would. 

As a general rule, Bruce didn’t endorse criminal action. He wanted to clean up Gotham, to provide legitimate work for its lower classes and ensure that the streets were safe. Gang violence was sort of antithetical to that. Still, his annoyance was mixed with relief when the gang declared they would not submit to Penguin’s authority. That is, until they brought out that gas.

Jim didn’t tell Bruce about all of his cases. He didn’t even mention most of them. But this gas was a familiar one - years ago, Jim had told Bruce a story of a boy whose father had tried to cure fear and ended up destroying his son’s brain. Bruce hadn’t really been sure why Jim had told him this story - as an illustration of his common refrain that pushing boundaries and conquering fear was unnecessary or harmful, the story was much too tragic to have been told to a small, recently traumatized child. But Bruce hadn’t considered himself a child then, and Jim had tried his best to treat him as an adult. 

Even though it had been years since he’d heard the story, Bruce immediately knew the gas in front of him to be that same concentrated fear. The gang leader sprayed it in Penguin’s face, and Bruce thought “No one deserves that.”

That night might have been the first time Bruce thought about the fear gas in years, but it was far from the last. The boy whose mind Jim had told him was shattered hid in the alleys of Gotham, sending terrified citizens running screaming into the night - if they were lucky. If they weren’t, either Bruce or the GCPD would find them, dead of fear and crumpled against a wall. This wasn’t the work of a teenager too traumatized to function. This was smooth, professional work. 

One night, Bruce heard a low laugh come from a deep shadow as an elderly man convulsed and screamed. Then, he knew that the boy (who the newspapers were calling the Scarecrow) wasn’t the scared hostage Bruce had thought he’d been. He was enjoying this.

Barely a year later, the Scarecrow was on the loose again, but he was far from the first thing on Bruce’s mind. Jerome Valeska was more important, more of an immediate threat. It scared him how easy it had become to prioritize things like this - when given the choice between saving a crowd of people and saving one victim, Bruce didn’t even stop to wish he could save them all. He hated that.

But no matter how much he hated what Gotham had become, what it had made him into, he knew he had to save it. Even as he ran past a baby crying alone in a shopping cart, its mother slashing and screaming at shadows and the Scarecrow sitting back and laughing, Bruce didn’t hesitate to run on to stop Jerome. (He called it in to Jim on the way though; he couldn’t simply do nothing, Gotham hadn’t ruined him yet.)

Bruce had been expecting the worst since he was twelve years old. Somehow, he’d never expected No Man’s Land.

Jeremiah had gone wrong, somehow, gone from being Bruce’s friend (and someone he maybe talked about to Selina a little too much and was maybe a little too interested in) to something corrupted. It hurt, to have Jeremiah stand beside him and whisper about ruling Gotham together like he would offer up the city on a platter if only it meant he could have Bruce. He couldn’t say he hadn’t thought about it, that for a brief second he hadn’t been tempted. But there was a wild possessiveness behind Jeremiah’s eyes, and with every time he lashed out, Bruce was more glad he’d stayed away.

In the end, Jeremiah had lost. But so had he. There was no way he could save the city now, not after what Jeremiah had done to it.

All the good people were gone from Gotham. The GCPD had stayed, and some of those who couldn’t escape, but by and large Gotham had been left to the gangs. Buildings exploded and shattered in a barrage of gunfire and their corpses rotted in the never-ending drizzle. 

Somehow, it was easy for Jim. He was wearing down, Bruce could tell, but he maintained this us-or-them mindset that Bruce just couldn’t. It was easy enough for him to hate Jeremiah, after all, Selina still lay in a makeshift hospital bed. Gotham was still crumbling. Some of the gangs, too: The ‘kill’ gang was something he despised. But for the most part, the gangs were made up of people who had nowhere else to go. Those were the people of Gotham now, not just the refugees they housed at Haven. 

It might have been easier if he never had to interact with them. If he’d just gotten reports of the violence without seeing it, Bruce thought he could have stopped caring. But this was Gotham, and nothing was ever that simple. 

Scarecrow’s gang was hardly the first to attack the GCPD. Even during No Man’s Land, Bruce had helped the GCPD fend off intruders trying to steal their guns, their generators. And when the lights went out this time, he assumed it was no different.

Bruce’s first clue should have been the location - none of Scarecrow’s goons made any attempt to find the armory. They didn’t swarm the residential corner, and there weren’t enough of them to attempt a head-on attack. 

Two of them stood guard outside the storeroom Jim had stocked full of all the food he could find. That had been months ago; now, the shelves were mostly empty. 

Thankful for Lucius’s night vision goggles, Bruce snuck up on the guards. They were unrecognizable in their masks and ragged clothes - they could have been anyone, co-opted into Scarecrow’s cult.   
Over the last few years, Bruce had learned to move soundlessly, and the guards didn’t stand a chance. Before they could send any warning, Bruce had knocked them out.

Inside, the lights were still out, but somehow there was movement. Cans scraped across the shelves and clinked gently as they fell into a bag of some sort. Bruce took down another of Scarecrow’s goons, leaving him crumpled on the floor before flipping the last one, slamming him down hard on the ground.

Bruce knelt, one knee on the goon’s chest, an arm pushed down on his throat. “Leave,” he growled. 

“Please,” the man said from under his mask. His voice was higher than Bruce would have expected, and thinner. This was a teenager, Bruce’s age at the oldest. “We’re hungry.”

“Maybe you should’ve thought about that before joining up with Scarecrow,” Bruce said without much conviction. “We can barely feed ourselves here.”

“He keeps us safe. We can’t survive on our own - no one can out there.” 

The admiration Bruce heard wasn’t that of a cultist. He’d assumed Scarecrow had built himself a fear cult, keeping his followers terrified but dependant. It seemed like what the sadistic madman he’d seen before would want. But this felt more genuine, somehow.

Bruce opened his mouth to speak, though to say what he wasn’t sure, when something hard slammed into the back of his head. He tumbled off his prisoner, turning his fall into a roll. Though his head throbbed so badly Bruce could barely focus his vision, he saw the vague outline of Scarecrow helping the boy up before the two of them disappeared into the still-dark basement. 

Ears ringing, Bruce walked back upstairs. Jim met his eyes as he and Harvey returned from another entrance, and Bruce shook his head, wincing.

It was weeks later when Bruce stumbled across a girl in an alley, standing firm and wielding a scythe as a huge man approached her. 

He was one of the ‘kill’ gang, that was immediately obvious. The man was well over six feet tall, built like a truck, and had a still-bloody ‘kill’ carved into his upper arm. He snarled, and his teeth were sharpened into points. The girl must have been one of Scarecrow’s - her clothes were patched together and torn, knives hung from her belt, and a mask covered most of her face. 

She slashed with the scythe, and the ‘kill’ man caught it by the handle. Smiling wide, he said “Kill” as he snapped it in half. 

“Hey! Over here!” Bruce yelled. 

Growling, he turned around. As he advanced towards Bruce, the girl picked up a jagged pipe from the ground. Just before the man reached Bruce, she stabbed him through the back. 

“Thanks,” she said, brushing her hands off on her pants. The man fell on the ground, blood gurgling out of his mouth. She ignored him.

“You just killed that man.”

“He was going to kill me. Besides, what were you gonna do, knock him out?” 

Bruce couldn’t quite look away from the cooling body on the ground. “I wasn’t going to kill him.”

“It’s kill or be killed here. You won’t last long judging everyone like that.”

“I’m not going to break the law.”

The girl cocked her head in judgement and crossed her arms.

“I’m not!”

“Gotta prove you’re better than us? The laws don’t help us anymore.”

“Is that why you joined up with Scarecrow?”

“He protects us. And he cares about us a damn sight more than the GCPD. But run on back to your Green Zone, see how well that treats you.” She stepped over the dead body on the ground and started to walk away.

“Wait,” Bruce called after her. “How did you know I’m from the Green Zone?”

She laughed. “It’s obvious.”

Bruce blinked, and she was gone.

He didn’t tell Alfred where he was going, mostly because he didn’t think he could justify it to Alfred. He could barely justify it to himself.

But Bruce was curious. He wanted to know how life worked in the Dark Zone. After all, he couldn’t try to save his city if he didn’t understand it. 

Bruce wasn’t overly surprised when he ended up at the border of Scarecrow’s territory an hour or so later. It was dark, but everything in Gotham happened at night. The empty streets in front of him were silent, but Bruce knew that didn’t mean anything.

Gotham was so quiet, now. Jeremiah had gotten rid of everything that animated the city, had stripped it of its people and its noise and its sense of home. All that was left was danger. Wind started to blow, and the breeze hitting the pebbles on the ruined sidewalks and the empty buildings was the loudest thing around. 

“Why are you here?” Asked a voice from the shadows.

“I mean no harm,” Bruce said.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“I suppose I’m curious.”

“Out at night in the Dark Zone out of curiosity?” There was a smile behind the voice. “That’s a dangerous thing to do.”

“Gotham is a dangerous city.”

“Yes, it is.” 

Someone stepped out of the shadows. Even from a distance, Bruce could tell that this wasn’t one of Scarecrow’s goons - this was the man himself. He wasn’t tall, and his costume wasn’t even particularly imposing, but Bruce could sense a danger to him. Scarecrow wouldn’t hesitate to cut him to pieces with that scythe or experiment on him with his fear gas if it was the least bit beneficial to him. Or maybe just if he was bored.

“Hello,” Bruce said.

“Hello,” Scarecrow echoed with a hint of menace behind his words.

“Why are your people so loyal to you? Shouldn’t they be scared of you?”

“Why are you so loyal to Jim Gordon?”

Bruce shrugged. “He’s trying to save Gotham.”

“An admirable goal, I’m sure,” Scarecrow chuckled. “Somewhat unrealistic.”

“What do you mean?”

“Go back to the Green Zone. That’s where you belong if you still think this city can be saved.”

“What do you mean?” Bruce asked again, louder. But Scarecrow was gone, slipped back into the shadows.

The following night Bruce was on patrol, but two nights after he’d left it, Bruce found himself standing just inside the boundary of Scarecrow’s territory again. He didn’t know what he hoped to learn, or what part of Gotham he was trying to save. 

“Hello?” Bruce called into the darkness. “Hello?!”

The sound echoed off the empty buildings until Bruce was convinced he’d made a mistake. He turned to leave when a voice rang out behind him.

“Announcing yourself like that is a good way to get killed.”

Scarecrow leaned against a wall, scythe propped up next to him. His eyes were the only things that didn’t blend into the background - everything else was easy enough to skip over, the dirty browns similar enough to the destroyed city. But Scarecrow’s eyes were stark white, and they stared right at him.

“I can defend myself,” Bruce said indignantly.

“I’m sure.” 

“Anyway, I’ve uh - I’ve brought you something.” Bruce reached into his bag and pulled out a can of peaches and a tin of Spam. 

“Why?”

And Bruce didn’t really know why. It had just seemed like the thing to do. “Because you’re right,” he said. “Jim can’t save the whole city by himself. These people, your people - they’re what Gotham has left.”

“How noble of you.” Scarecrow did not come any closer.

Bruce held up the cans. “Do you want them, or not?”

Scarecrow spoke through gritted teeth, obviously unwilling to say it. “Yes.”

“I’ll just leave these here then.” Bruce set the cans on the ground and turned to walk away.

“You should know better than to turn your back in Gotham.” Scarecrow stood directly behind Bruce, his scythe curved around his neck. Bruce hadn’t even heard him move.

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to kill me?”

“No.” The scythe withdrew. “But I could have.”

“But you didn’t.” Bruce smiled with the corner of his mouth as he left the Dark Zone.

The Green Zone was chaos. Alfred never asked Bruce where he’d been going at night, but he knew Alfred knew something was up. Alfred always knew.

The Wayne Enterprises helicopter was shot down, and Selina -

It was easier out here, Bruce told himself as he walked beyond the gates of the Green Zone once again. He wasn’t steering himself towards any particular destination, but he wasn’t surprised when he entered familiar territory. Then he thought that he probably shouldn’t see Scarecrow’s territory as familiar.

“Why do you keep coming here?”

Scarecrow was close. He stood a few feet from Bruce in the street, not holding his scythe this time. His head tilted to the side slightly in a manner Bruce thought was supposed to be threatening, and would have been if he hadn’t faced things so much worse than a kid in a costume.

“Why do you keep meeting me?” Bruce asked back. “Surely you have people for that?”

“I think you’re interesting, Bruce Wayne.”

“How do you know my name?”

“You don’t wear a mask.”

“Is that why you wear a mask? For anonymity?”

Scarecrow’s fingers twitched, like he was angry, though he didn’t sound angry when he spoke. “The Scarecrow is fear itself! It instills terror so much more effectively than any one person could hope to.”

Bruce crossed his arms. “You act like you aren’t a person behind the mask.”

Scarecrow mimicked him crossing his arms. “I’m not,” he said petulantly.

“Everyone’s a person.”

Scarecrow sighed, a sound that hissed through the gas mask under his mask and layered on itself until it was louder than it possibly could have begun. “Are you going to tell me that all people are worth saving, or some other useless platitude? Save your breath.”

“If you’re saying you don’t think you’re worth saving, I’d ask what you need saving from.”

Before he could so much as blink, Bruce felt the cold steel of a needle pressed against the side of his neck. Scarecrow was so much closer to him now, and he held a syringe filled with the liquid Bruce knew to be fear toxin against his jugular. 

“Get out,” he hissed.

Bruce looked into Scarecrow’s eyes as he pushed the hand that held the syringe away from him. He’d seen these eyes manic with joy at spreading fear and he’d seen them suspicious, but he’d never seen them angry. 

“Fine,” he said. He didn’t hesitate to turn his back on Scarecrow as he walked out.

“I didn’t see you last night.”

Bruce could have laughed. Is this what his life had come to? Consorting with a wanted criminal on an almost-nightly basis just to escape from his normal life?

“After you threatened to kill me, I should think not,” he responded, voice flat and unamused.

“I’m not going to apologize, if that’s what you want.” Scarecrow wasn’t in the middle of the street, as he had been last time. He’d retreated almost to the shadows again, and his shoulders were hunched. The scythe was still nowhere to be seen.

“It would be nice.”

Scarecrow glared at him. He kicked a piece of the cracked sidewalk and said, quiet enough that Bruce could barely hear him, “I was worried.”

“You threatened my life twice and then you were worried about me.” Bruce said flatly, crossing his arms.

“Gotham is dangerous.”

“You’re telling me.”

“I wasn’t going to kill you.”

Bruce sighed. “I know.”

“If you’re still curious about the Dark Zone, there’s more to my territory than just this block.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. Scarecrow was deliberately changing the topic and he knew it, but he thought he would let him. “Are you offering to show me around?”

The Dark Zone wasn’t all too different from the Green Zone, Bruce found. Except for the lack of electricity. He wasn’t sure there was running water either. Everyone there seemed to be a teenager, and they all looked up to Scarecrow. 

Despite the lack of, well, everything, this place had the same sort of structure as the Green Zone. Maybe a more effective one, as angry complaints against Jim and the GCPD were common, but he didn’t imagine that would be the case here.

“It’s a war out there,” Scarecrow said as if reading his mind. “But I try to keep this area safe.”

“Why?”

“No one wants to live in a war zone.”

Bruce avoided looking at Scarecrow when he said “But you’re supposed to be fear, right? And these people… They’re not afraid of you.”

Scarecrow abruptly hooked two fingers around Bruce’s arm and pulled him into an alley. It was dark, but not so dark that he couldn’t see. 

“You were right when you said I’m a person, as much as I wish you weren’t.” Scarecrow reached up and pulled off his mask. 

Under the mask, Scarecrow could have been anyone. He was nondescript, more inclined to anonymity than terror. He was too thin, face hollowed out from malnutrition, but so were so many in No Man’s Land. His hair seemed to be brown because to be any other color would be noticeable. It looked like it hadn’t been brushed in weeks, though Bruce suspected that wasn’t something Scarecrow cared about at all. And his eyes were closed, face twisted as though he was anticipating pain.

“Would you still like me to call you Scarecrow?” Bruce asked hesitantly. 

“No one’s ever asked me what I wanted to be called before,” he said, slowly opening his eyes, face relaxing. “I suppose you can call me Jonathan.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Jonathan,” Bruce said with a small smile.

“I’m just gonna - uh,” Jonathan motioned to the mask he held in one hand, quickly pulling it back on. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Bruce.”

“See you.” Before Bruce had finished speaking, Jonathan had vanished back into the shadows. 

On the walk back to the Green Zone (a place Bruce still couldn’t bring himself to think of as ‘home’), Bruce caught himself smiling. He had to backtrack after walking into Firefly’s territory by accident - no matter how safe he inexplicably felt in Scare- Jonathan’s territory, he wasn’t about to take his chances with Firefly. 

“Are you all right, master Bruce?” Alfred asked upon his return.

“Oh uh, I’m fine. Thank you, Alfred.”

“You seem happy. Found Jeremiah, have we?”

Bruce blinked. Somehow, over the last week, he’d forgotten the months he’d spent tearing apart the Dark Zone searching for any mention of Jeremiah. He’d been so desperate for revenge, for   
something. And that desire was still there, but he didn’t think finding Jeremiah and beating him until he regretted being born was something that would help him or make him happy. 

“Not yet,” Bruce said. 

“You’ll get him eventually. There’s only so many places he could be hiding.”

If he’d still been angry, Bruce would have said ‘There’s a whole city.’ And he was angry with Jeremiah - as long as he could still see Alfred die when he closed his eyes, as long as Selina still lay in that hospital bed because of him, he would be. But it had faded into the background.

“Yeah, Alfred. I will.”

Alfred raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

“Hey.” 

It was dark, and Bruce was in the Dark Zone again. Jonathan stood near where a bus stop had once been, the bench overturned and the glass shattered out onto the crumbling sidewalk. He wasn’t wearing his costume - though his clothes were shabby and patched enough to resemble a scarecrow on their own, Jonathan had traded in the full scarecrow attire for jeans so patched it was impossible to tell what shade of black they had originally been and a flannel faded to a dirty brown. His hands were stuffed in his pockets and his shoulders were hunched. Bruce almost thought he looked… nervous?

“Hello, Jonathan.” That should sound formal, Bruce thought, but it didn’t. It really, really didn’t. 

“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

“Thought you’d scared me off?”

Jonathan was silent for a moment. “Maybe.”

“Are we going anywhere tonight?” 

“Wherever you want.”

Bruce pointed to the left. “That way?”

Jonathan walked to stand next to him and peered down the street to the left. “That’s the way to Penguin’s territory.”

“We can go another way, if you want.” Bruce didn’t mean for it to sound like a challenge, to sound like ‘if you’re scared,’ but it did. 

“Left is good.”

They haven’t even left Jonathan’s territory when there is a movement in the shadows. 

“That’s Penguin’s,” Jonathan said, pointing to the abandoned sandwich shop on the other side of a wide street. 

Bruce nodded absently, body tensed as he listened to their surroundings.

When the man stepped out of the shadows, Bruce was ready. He took two quick steps, punched the man in the stomach, and flipped him across his knee. The man landed with his back on the ground with a hard thud. 

“Shouldn’t be out after dark, y’know?” The man said with a forced smile.

In a second, Jonathan pulled a small knife out of his pocket. He slashed a shallow line across the man’s throat, just deep enough to bleed. 

“I almost regret not having my fear gas with me,” he said, a wide smile stretching across his face. “I wonder what you’d see. What scares you?”

The man grabbed for the gun that lay abandoned on the sidewalk next to him. 

“Not so fast,” Jonathan practically whispered, flipping his knife once between his fingers so that just the tip of the blade brushed the man’s chin. “I can still make you feel fear.”

Bruce reached out to grab Jonathan’s arm, to make him stop. “Jonathan, wait-”

“Not now, Bruce,” Jonathan said without looking at him. “Is it spiders? The dark? Helplessness?” He dragged the knife across the man’s throat again, just a little deeper.

This time, when Bruce reached out, Jonathan turned. Over the past two nights, Bruce had become so used to seeing Jonathan vulnerable, as deliberately unthreatening as he could make himself, that he’d almost forgotten. This was the Scarecrow. Jonathan’s eyes were wild, the same manic joy he’d seen behind the Scarecrow mask before. 

“Please,” Bruce said. “Don’t.”

Something in Jonathan’s eyes softened. “Okay,” he said. With a swift slash, he slit the man’s throat and watched as his blood gushed out. 

“Shall we?” He said, wiping the blood off the knife on the man’s shirt and gesturing onwards with a tilt of his head.

“You just killed that man.”

Jonathan nodded.

“You can’t just kill people.” 

“I’ve killed more people than you can count,” Jonathan said, stuffing the knife back into his pocket. “Most of them didn’t have it coming like he did. That didn’t seem to bother you earlier. Was it easier if you’d never seen it? Do you only tolerate me by ignoring the parts of me you don’t want to see?”

“It’s not like that - look, you were going to torture that man!” Bruce didn’t know which specific part of this he objected to besides all of it. He’d fooled himself into forgetting that Jonathan and the Scarecrow were the same, or he’d justified it by saying that No Man’s Land called for a bending of the law. He would never kill; he’d made a vow. But there was a difference between killing out of self-defense and killing for its own sake, and what Jonathan had just done was the latter.

Jonathan met his eyes. “I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve killed. I’ve killed the elderly, and women, and people with promising lives ahead of them. I watch them suffer and I take notes on their fears and I enjoy it. It’s fun. I’m not a good person, Bruce. I’ve never pretended to be.”

“Goodbye.” 

Bruce crossed his arms tightly and walked away, back to Jonathan, still unafraid of him. He shook his head - how could he have been so stupid? He’d let himself care about the Scarecrow, for goodness’ sake. Where could he have ever thought that would lead but to him getting hurt?

Two nights passed before Bruce started his early-morning patrol to find a note on the Green Zone’s main gate. In a messy, scrawled handwriting Bruce could barely read, it read:

_“I’m not sorry, but I think you want me to be. I’ll apologize if you like. If it means you’ll come back. _  
_-Jonathan”_

Bruce tore the letter from the gate and shoved it in his pocket before anyone could see it. He wasn’t going back.

“I’m sorry, Bruce.” 

He hadn’t meant to go back. In fact, Bruce had explicitly decided that caring about an unrepentant serial killer was just about the worst decision he could possibly make. He didn’t even want to think about what Jeremiah would do if he found out - he got the sense what he’d done to Selina hadn’t been anywhere close to what he was capable of doing in anger and jealousy.

But here he was anyway, standing in the middle of the same block in the north side of the city, just past the edge of Scarecrow’s territory.

Jonathan himself again stood beside the ruined bus stop, only this time he had returned to full Scarecrow costume, mask and all. 

“You don’t mean that,” Bruce said.

“You’re right. I don’t.”

“Then why did you say it?”

Jonathan moved from the bus stop to the middle of the street, still a good ten or fifteen feet away from Bruce. “I’m not sorry for killing him. I regret driving you away.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Bruce knew he was bothered by that. By the fact that Jonathan, who he had barely known for two weeks, prized his company above people’s lives. 

“Why did you come back, if not for the apology?” Jonathan asked.

Bruce ground his teeth and closed his eyes for a moment before he spoke. “I’m curious.”

“About what?”

“About you.”

“Me?” Jonathan asked, raising a hand to his chest in mock shock. The equipped tubes of fear toxin on the backs of his hands glinted in the moonlight, leaving no doubt that he was dangerous. As though Bruce would be dumb enough to forget again. “What do you want to know?”

“Have you ever regretted killing the people you’ve killed?”

“No. I might’ve, once. Before. I think I regretted my father’s victims.”

“Your father’s?” It had been a long time since Jim had told Bruce Jonathan’s story. Bruce had had a lot on his mind at the time (though when didn’t he). He thought he should remember, but the details hovered just outside the reach of his memory. And, though he hated to admit it to himself, he wanted to hear Jonathan tell him, just to know more about him.

“Shall we?” Jonathan motioned down the street. Bruce got the sense that if the Scarecrow costume had pockets, Jonathan’s hands would be in his pockets.

Though he knew it was a bad idea, Bruce walked down the street with Jonathan deeper into his territory. Jonathan took off the mask when they started walking and let it hang behind him like the hood on a sweatshirt. It was strange, seeing him like this, Bruce thought. He’d seen the Scarecrow kill, and he’d seen Jonathan kill, but now, with this strange mixture of both personas, he seemed almost peaceful.

“My father performed… similar experiments to my own,” Jonathan said after a couple blocks walking in silence. “His weren’t as advanced. And he made me help. He must’ve killed three or four people? Harvested their organs. I remember feeling bad for them, then.”

“You don’t anymore?”

Jonathan shook his head.

After a couple more blocks of silence, Bruce asked “Why did you choose a scarecrow?”

“My father gave me a choice seven years ago. I could lose my mind resisting my fear, or I could give in to it. I made my choice.” Jonathan smiled bitterly.

“I’m sorry.”

“You know, I think you really are.”

“Why do you care about the law so much?” Jonathan asked some time later. 

“Why don’t you?”

“It’s irrelevant. Especially now. Your answer?”

“Without it, murders like my parents’ can’t be brought to justice.”

“Justice is a strange concept. Do you think I should be brought to justice?”

Bruce looked at the sky. It was foggy, dark. “Probably,” he said.

“Are you going to arrest me?”

“No.” Bruce paused. “I should.”

“Thank you.”

“For not arresting you?”

“I appreciate it.”

The clouds hadn’t left, but the alley shadows were starting to seem just a little shorter and less impenetrable when Jonathan asked “Will you come back tomorrow?”

Bruce knew he should say no. He had morals to stick to, and a city to save, and he had to sleep sometime. 

“Yes.”

“I’m glad.” Jonathan looked at the ground and was silent for a moment. “Forgive me if I’m misreading the situation, but may I?”

Bruce didn’t know what situation Jonathan thought they were in, but he didn’t say no, so Jonathan carefully slid his hand into Bruce’s. He only looked at Bruce once their fingers were linked together, and then he did so hesitantly, prepared for Bruce to take his hand back and leave again, this time probably forever.

Bruce didn’t.

Logically, he knew he shouldn’t be enjoying this. He shouldn’t look down at his bare hand linked with Jonathan’s gloved one, fear toxin openly attached to it, and be happy. And he definitely shouldn’t think that Jonathan, the Scarecrow himself, furiously blushing a bright pink was ridiculously adorable. But he did. And, he thought, he was okay with that. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Bruce said, squeezing Jonathan’s hand gently.

“Tomorrow.” Jonathan replied.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, leave a comment/kudos below and/or come yell about these two with me on tumblr @alpacasandravens where i never post about them but am always down to fangirl over these characters.


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